nick candy super yacht

Nick Candy is selling his £54m superyacht while he builds a better one

By Annabelle Spranklen

If you’re in the market for a new superyacht , Nick Candy’s whopping number might be just what you’re looking for.

The billionaire property tycoon has announced that his lavish superyacht, named 11.11, is now on the market for 59,500,000 Euros (£53,758,547.50) but you better be quick.

The 63-metre long vessel was built in 2015 by the prestigious Italian yacht builder Benetti and scooped a World Superyacht Award in 2016. Candy expects it to be snapped up quickly after demand for high-spec yachts surged during the pandemic, with the super-rich looking for ways to travel in the most Covid-safe way.

By Harriet Johnston

By Isaac Bickerstaff

Candy said in a statement,'I've been approached over the last few years to sell it – often by charter guests who after spending one or two weeks on board want to buy it – but I've always said no.

'I'm currently nine months down the line with designs for a new and bigger yacht, so now feels like a good time to sell, especially as there is increasing demand for superyachts which are viewed as a safer alternative to shore-based travel due to their natural isolation and self-sufficiency.'

The new owner will find stunning Art Deco-style interiors inside, designed to be brief by Candy and his wife, former actress and singer, Holly Valance. There’s plenty of space for large groups of friends and family. The VIP suite has its own separate lounge and marble bathroom, while the master suite comes with its own private deck, 180-degree views and jet pool. There’s also a nursery and four further guest cabins.

Days can be spent soaking up the rays from the split-level sundeck, with its large Jacuzzi pool and bar. There’s also an on-board spa with a treatment room and steam room, helipad for ferrying guests, a trampoline and a climbing wall, plus heaps of water toys to keep you busy.

Candy said: 'We have made some amazing memories on board over the past five years. The service level on board 11.11 is like no five-star hotel on the planet.

'The crew have taken service, food, hospitality, and maintenance of a superyacht to a whole new level but it's time to move on and build something new that works for our family and lifestyle in the future.

'I have always had a passion for yachts and get huge enjoyment from the project side of building and designing a boat – it is not dissimilar to building a house or an apartment building.'

11.11 is available to buy through Y.CO

By Danielle Lawler

By Chandler Tregaskes

By Isaac Zamet

We've detected unusual activity from your computer network

To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.

Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy .

For inquiries related to this message please contact our support team and provide the reference ID below.

• Motorcycles
• Car of the Month
• Destinations
• Men’s Fashion
• Watch Collector
• Art & Collectibles
• Vacation Homes
• Celebrity Homes
• New Construction
• Home Design
• Electronics
• Fine Dining
• Baja Bay Club
• Costa Palmas
• Fairmont Doha
• Four Seasons Private Residences Dominican Republic at Tropicalia
• Reynolds Lake Oconee
• Scott Dunn Travel
• Wilson Audio
• 672 Wine Club
• Sports & Leisure
• Health & Wellness
• Best of the Best
• The Ultimate Gift Guide

This Real Estate Mogul Is Selling His 260-Foot Superyacht for $71 Million—Because It’s Not Big Enough

The art deco masterpiece is is jam-packed with one-of-a-kind art, five-star amenities and bars aplenty., rachel cormack.

Digital Editor

Rachel Cormack's Most Recent Stories

• A U.S. Lawmaker Is Accusing Loro Piana of Exploiting Peruvian Workers

This New High-Performance Electric RIB Can Hit a Ferocious 50 Knots at Full Tilt

This insane submarine concept doubles as a 107-foot superyacht.

• Share This Article

Nick Candy may have built his fortune peddling mansions to the well-heeled, but now he’s diving headfirst into the marine game. The British real estate mogul is selling his very own luxury superyacht for a cool $71 million.

The custom 260-footer, known as 11.11 , was designed and built by Benetti and first hit the seas in 2015. The entrepreneur poured millions of dollars into the vessel to ensure it was finished to his standards. The end result is a superyacht jam-packed with blue-chip artwork, five-star amenities and bars aplenty. Think of it as one of Candy’s mansions at sea.

The upscale interior, which was envisioned by Candy’s namesake firm , features bespoke chandeliers, flashes of silver leaf, the finest Italian marble and statement mirrors that give a decidedly Art Deco aesthetic. Of course, it’s also been styled to perfection, and the space is adorned with works by contemporary artists. There’s a bespoke neon piece that reads “Move Me” by Tracey Emin, a “Butterfly Wall” by Dominic Harris, a light box installation by Hans Kotter and various photographs by Helmut Newton.

The spacious vessel can accommodate up to 14 guests across six cabins and features an indoor and outdoor bar on every single level. The generous master suite is situated on the upper deck and affords incredible views, a walk-in wardrobe, and a private sundeck with a jet pool and sunbathing area. The guest accommodation, meanwhile, consists of a full-beam VIP suite located on the main deck, plus two double cabins and two convertible twins that are found on the lower deck. There is also space for up to 16 crew.

Elsewhere, seafarers can enjoy a sky lounge, which is positioned on the upper deck and features a custom cocktail bar, an elegant main saloon with a backlit onyx dining table, a 14-seat al fresco dining area, as well as several sundecks and terraces.

The bespoke neon piece by artist Tracey Emin.  Jeff Brown

When it comes time for a little R&R, guests can make use of the gym, steam room, massage room, spa and the inviting jacuzzi. On top of that, 11.11 has a full arsenal of water toys, a custom 26-foot Benetti Limo tender and a 20-foot Novurania RIB. There’s also a helipad located on the bow, for the weekend jaunt into the city.

As you might expect from a Benetti, the performance is no slouch either. The speedster is fitted with twin 3512-C Caterpillar engines, which give a top speed of 17 knots and a range of 5,000 nautical miles at cruising speed. That gives you the ability to travel just about anywhere you like and is arguably 11.11 ’s biggest drawcard.

“It’s a level of luxury that, until you’ve experienced it, is very difficult to comprehend,” Candy told Bloomberg . “You can have dinner in one place and wake up in another.”

So, why is Candy trying to flip the vessel? The 47-year-old told Bloomberg he’s ready for an upgrade. “I want to build a bigger yacht,” he told the publication. “It’s like anything in life. Sometimes you want to have a change. Later in life, people contract their lives; at this age, I’m still expanding.”

Furthermore, Candy is capitalizing on the proclivity for marine travel during the pandemic. Yachts have become increasingly popular of late as they allow travelers to get about in a socially distanced fashion. Indeed, this month alone, 16 superyachts spanning more than 100-feet each were sold, according to SuperYacht Times.

This is the first time 11.11 has hit the market since her launch and she’s expected to draw a lot of attention. The vessel is listed for sale with Y.CO for the sum of $71 Million (€59.5 million).

Check out more photos of the vessel below:

Rachel Cormack is a digital editor at Robb Report. She cut her teeth writing for HuffPost, Concrete Playground, and several other online publications in Australia, before moving to New York at the…

Read More On:

More marine.

This New 144-Foot Superyacht Has a Glassed-In Dining Room With Ocean Views

Taking a Bow: How Yacht Makers Are Rethinking the Front End

Culinary Masters 2024

MAY 17 - 19 Join us for extraordinary meals from the nation’s brightest culinary minds.

Give the Gift of Luxury

Latest Galleries in Marine

The eD 32 c-ultra in Photos

Deep Sea Dreamer in Photos

More from our brands, cameron diaz in valentino, stella mccartney and more of her best red carpet looks through the years, who is kim mulkey, the lsu coach battling the washington post, ryan gosling’s ‘the fall guy’ heads to china cinemas (exclusive), former employee sues museum of arts and design, claiming she was fired after complaining about director’s expenses, the best yoga blocks to support any practice, according to instructors.

Real-estate tycoon Nick Candy is selling his $71 million superyacht to upgrade to a bigger one — see inside

• Real-estate mogul Nick Candy's superyacht, 11.11, has hit the market for $71 million. 
• The 207-foot yacht sports room for 14 guests, several bars, multiple dining areas, a spa, and a pool.
• Candy is looking to upgrade to a larger boat, he told Bloomberg. 
• The selling dealer, Y.CO, also has the yacht listed for charter for roughly $770,000 per week. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories .

Nick Candy, a British real-estate mogul, is parting ways with his 207-foot superyacht, but it's not because he needs the money or because he's moved on to other hobbies. It's because the ship is simply too small. 

Candy, who's selling his yacht 11.11 for $71 million through yacht company Y.CO, is looking to upgrade to something a bit more spacious, he told Bloomberg recently.

"I want to build a bigger yacht," Candy said. "Later in life, people contract their lives; at this age, I'm still expanding."

Apparently, six bedrooms, multiple decks, pool areas, a nursery, a full-blown spa, and several bars isn't quite enough for the businessman. But Candy's extremely high standards aren't terribly surprising, given that he made his fortune selling some of the priciest and most extravagant real estate imaginable. 

Take a closer look at 11.11 and all of its amenities below.

Nick Candy — a British real-estate mogul who made a fortune on ultra-luxury homes — is selling his gargantuan superyacht for $71 million.

Although the 207-foot yacht is extravagant by most people's standards, Candy is looking to upgrade to something a bit larger, he told Bloomberg.

"I want to build a bigger yacht," Candy told the outlet. "It's like anything in life. Sometimes you want to have a change."

Source: Bloomberg

That may be true, but the superyacht still has plenty going for it. That is, if you're into this sort of thing.

For example, Candy made sure to outfit his yacht with both an indoor bar and an outdoor bar on every level, as well as room for 1,000 bottles of wine.

Its art-deco interior, which was designed by Candy's firm, features gobs of polished stainless steel, mirrors, and Italian marble.

Plus, 11.11 accommodates up to 14 guests in six cabins.

The master suite offers a walk-in dressing room, 180-degree views ...

... and a palatial bathroom.

It opens up onto a private deck with a lounge area ...

... and a jet pool.

The yacht also has numerous other decks ...

... and indoor lounge areas.

The sun deck sports a mosaic-decorated jacuzzi and an Italian-stone bar.

Plus, there's an outdoor dining space for 14 ...

... and an indoor one.

The superyacht also offers up a steam room, massage room, gym, and a helipad for good measure.

It also comes with its own matching tender built by Benetti, the company behind 11.11.

Those who can't quite swing the $71 million asking price may still have a shot at taking 11.11 out for a spin.

The selling dealer, Y.CO, is also renting out the yacht for $770,000 per week.

• Main content

BROWSER UPDATE To gain access to the full experience, please upgrade your browser:

Real-estate Tycoon Nick Candy to Sell €59M Superyacht

The property developer said a team of architects has been building a new yacht for the last nine months, newsletter sign-up, week in review.

Shares the stories you may have missed from the world of luxury real estate

Real estate mogul Nick Candy is selling his superyacht – to buy a bigger one.

The superyacht, dubbed 11.11, is listed for sale at  €59.5m (£53.4)  by yacht dealer Y.Co and was custom built by Italian shipbuilding company Benetti.  Built in 2015 , it boasts six cabins for 12 guests and can reach a maximum speed of 16.5 knots.

For those not in the market for a new yacht, rest assured that it can be chartered for €650,000 per week (£583,000), with a crew of 16 people.

The 63-metre superyacht, which is docked in Croatia in the summer, is a World Superyacht Award winner. It features a helipad, limo tender, fours bars and two main bedroom suites. Candy told the  Times  that he had hired a "whole team of architects" to build a bigger yacht, adding that it had been in the works for nine months. The British developer is best known for the One Hyde Park apartment block in London's Knightsbridge.

More: Lachlan Murdoch Buys $14.1 Million Los Angeles Home of Model Cheryl Tiegs

The boat is named after the birth date of Candy's eldest daughter with Holly Valance, a former soap star and singer.

"We are pleased to be representing 11.11 for sale for the very first time," said Will Christie, head of sales at Y.Co, in a statement on the superyacht’s profile  online .

"She is one of the most exciting new launches of the last few years and we anticipate that she will receive a lot of attention in this market," Christie added. "She is not only visually striking but has the pedigree build-quality and exceptional performance to mark her as one of the highest calibre yachts available for sale."

Read Next Story

Financial News

Asset Management

Investment Banking

Hedge Funds

Newsletters

Real Estate

Real-estate tycoon Nick Candy to sell €59m superyacht

The property developer said a team of architects has been building a new yacht for the last nine months

Bérengère Sim

Friday, 21 August 2020 at 11:10

Real estate mogul Nick Candy is selling his superyacht – to buy a bigger one.

Accessibility Links

Property tycoon Nick Candy to sell £54m superyacht so he can get a bigger one

The property tycoon Nick Candy is seeking a buyer for his superyacht so that he can build a bigger one.

He has listed the 63-metre Benetti yacht with Y.Co, the yacht dealer, with an asking price of €59.5 million (£54 million).

Marketed as the ultimate yacht for sophisticated entertaining, it features a helipad, limo tender, whirlpool bath and four bars. It has two main bedroom suites and can host 12 guests.

Christened 11.11 after the birthdate of Luka, his elder daughter, the yacht has a top speed of 16.5 knots and is staffed by a crew of 16.

Mr Candy, 47, who is married to Holly Valance, 37, the singer and actress, said that he was in no rush to sell the yacht, which he

Related articles

• Entertainment
• Celebrity Life

Holly Valance’s billionaire husband buys her $53m yacht despite her getting seasick

BILLIONAIRE Nick Candy spoiled his Aussie wife, Holly Valance, with an extravagant gift. But she needed the help of a TV hypnotist to use it.

Star reveals ‘real’ face after six years

Dramatic footage as police raid star’s homes

William’s private response to Harry revealed

THE billionaire husband of actress Holly Valance bought her a £26 million ($53 million) yacht — even though she got seasick.

The Sun reports tycoon Nick Candy had to call on TV hypnotist Paul McKenna, 52, to stop her throwing up on the Benetti vessel. And it has now emerged that she “hasn’t had a dose since”.

Aussie Holly, 32 — mum of two-year-old Luka — was “heavily involved” in redesigning “11.11” to make it childproof, 43-year-old Nick told Boat International magazine .

The ex- Neighbours and Strictly star also helped choose the decor including expensive artwork by Tracey Emin, 52.

“There were no bars and the sundeck was all wrong — everything was too small, the jacuzzi, the seating. Inside it was like a Russian tsar’s palace,” British property mogul Nick said of the yacht’s revamp.

“It’s not my family’s style. Functionality and comfort are the most important things. My wife told me, ‘I’m not sitting on another sofa that’s uncomfortable’.”

Nick and Holly have sailed to Monaco and St Tropez in France on the Benetti and to Capri in Italy where Simon Cowell — a pal of McKenna — was a guest on board.

This story originally appeared in The Sun .

Bruce Willis’s daughter has given fans a look at her “real” face, having had all her filler dissolved after six years.

Armed federal law enforcement agents have swarmed a top US star’s homes, as online sleuths track his private jet to a remote island.

Harry reached out to his estranged brother after hearing the news about Kate on television - and it showed the current state of their relationship.

• Work & Careers
• Life & Arts

Become an FT subscriber

Limited time offer save up to 40% on standard digital.

• Global news & analysis
• Expert opinion
• Special features
• FirstFT newsletter
• Videos & Podcasts
• Android & iOS app
• FT Edit app
• 10 gift articles per month

Explore more offers.

Standard digital.

• FT Digital Edition

Premium Digital

Print + premium digital.

Then $75 per month. Complete digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. Cancel anytime during your trial.

• 10 additional gift articles per month
• Global news & analysis
• Exclusive FT analysis
• Videos & Podcasts
• FT App on Android & iOS
• Everything in Standard Digital
• Premium newsletters
• Weekday Print Edition

Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders. Pay a year upfront and save 20%.

• Everything in Print
• Everything in Premium Digital

The new FT Digital Edition: today’s FT, cover to cover on any device. This subscription does not include access to ft.com or the FT App.

Terms & Conditions apply

Explore our full range of subscriptions.

Why the ft.

See why over a million readers pay to read the Financial Times.

International Edition

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Candy brothers: ‘One day they were likely lads, then they were everywhere’

C hristian Candy is a tax exile, and proud of it. “What!” he once exclaimed during a game of Monopoly with a Financial Times reporter , when he had the misfortune of landing on the super-tax square. “I don’t pay tax. I’m a tax exile.”

The high-profile property developer – who with his brother, Nick, developed the superluxe One Hyde Park apartment complex for London’s oligarchs and is now converting a row of seven houses overlooking Regent’s Park into a single 4,600 sq metre London mansion – even named his twins Isabella Monaco Evanthia and Cayman Charles Wolf.

But don’t try to join the dots. The children, born last year to Christian and his socialite turned criminal psychologist wife, Lady Emily Crompton-Candy, are definitely not named after notorious tax havens. A family spokesman said Cayman is named after one of his dad’s favourite cars. “Christian and Emily liked the name Cayman in relation to the Porsche,” she said. It is not entirely clear why they chose Monaco for the little girl – there is no Porsche Monaco – but it is where the family live.

A tour of the Candy car collection, however, would provide plenty of inspiration for naming any future additions to the family. When he and Nick lived together in what was once billionaire banker Edmond Safra’s 1,625 sq metre Monaco penthouse, Nick boasted that their garage housed a Rolls-Royce Phantom, Rolls-Royce convertible, Mercedes SLR McLaren, Ferrari F430 Spider, Ferrari 575M Maranello, two Range Rovers, a Cherokee Jeep and a Renault Clio. “It was a lark,” he said. “We liked cars.”

Certainly, there will be plenty of space for cars at Christian’s new Regent’s Park property. The latest acquisition, of seven Grade I-listed John Nash townhouses on Cambridge Terrace and 1-2 Chester Gate, boasts underground parking for more than a dozen motors and a 12-metre roof garden – the “hanging gardens of Camden”. According to Land Registry filings, the building is owned by a British Virgin Islands company, with Christian Candy’s financial interest in the company listed from August.

He is reported to have bought it from his fellow property magnate Marcus Cooper for close to £100m. The brothers declined to answer any questions asked by the Guardian before publication, including whether Christian intended to live in the property following a refurbishment.

Nick, 41, and Christian, 40, are very rich, and they want you to know it. As well as properties in Monaco, Manhattan, Los Angeles, London and elsewhere, the brothers have owned the superyachts Candyscape I and II (which featured a €100,000 (£78,000) Perspex Schimmel piano that plays itself), a powerboat called Catch Me If You Candy, and private jets. There are also £10,000 Girard-Perregaux watches and handmade £1,000-a-pair Berluti shoes.

They are Conservative party donors , and Nick shared a table with former party treasurer Lord Fink at the 2013 summer fundraising party.

Opulence, rather than wealth, is the brand, and the Candymen are its biggest ambassadors. “It’s a brand. You want people to have the right opinion,” Nick has said.

The more outlandish the building project, the more column inches the brothers have attracted. In the early days Nick boasted that clients – mostly Russian or Middle Eastern billionaires – had asked for “a jacuzzi on a private jet”, “swimming pools that turn into ballrooms” and a “helicopter with a boardroom in the back”.

He explained to the Daily Mail that the brothers’ clients were “you know … rulers of countries, oligarchs, some of the richest entrepreneurs in the world”. But while many of the world’s richest people go to extreme lengths to keep the true scale of their wealth secret, the Candys fight to correct underestimates of their fortune.

In 2008 they appeared in the Sunday Times Rich List with an estimated wealth of £120m. The brothers viewed this as embarrassingly low-ball and took the unusual step of opening up their offshore books (their main company CPC Group is registered in Guernsey), which resulted in their estimated fortune jumping to £330m in 2009. But it dropped back to £300m a year later.

Unimpressed, their people put a call in to Philip Beresford, compiler of the Rich List for the past 26 years. “They grumbled about it being too low,” Beresford said.

Twice Beresford arranged a meeting with the Candys’ finance man so they could prove their greater wealth, and twice they cancelled. Beresford has omitted them from the list ever since. “They don’t go in because I can’t see enough evidence of huge wealth. Sure, they have built One Hyde Park and one of them has bought the big house recently, but until I am sure they made the millions from One Hyde Park, I will not put them in.

“I have enough trouble getting rich lists out and negotiating the minefields of vast egos without taking them on board too.”

Beresford said they will remain barred from the list “until [the] huge wealth which is attributable to them appears in Companies House”.

Last year Nick claimed that the brothers’ rise “from nothing” had attracted the attention of Hollywood scriptwriters asking to “write a story about you, because it’s quite a success story”.

So far, no feature film appears to be under way, but the boys were not quite born into nothing. Nick was born in Wimbledon in January 1973, a year and a half before Christian, to an Anglo-Italian father, Anthony, who ran an advertising production company, and Patricia, a Greek-Cypriot drama teacher. They grew up mostly in the wealthy Surrey commuter town of Banstead and were educated privately in Epsom. Nick read human geography at Reading University, before joining the accountants KPMG. There followed a spell in advertising at J Walter Thompson and Dentsu Group, where he became the youngest director. Christian studied business at King’s College London before joining a commodity trading firm.

Nick said, at the Mipim property conference last week, that the brothers got into property “from a very young age” – his parents “dragged me round houses because they aspired to live in a better house”.

Their first foray into property came in 1995. With a £6,000 loan from their grandmother and a mortgage guarantee from their father they bought a one-bed flat in Fulham for £122,000. They refurbished it, selling it on18 months later for a £50,000 profit. On the next flat they doubled their money, giving them the confidence to found the interior design firm Candy & Candy in 1999, taking their cue from the success of advertising group Saatchi & Saatchi, founded by brothers Maurice and Charles.

Then they started to get noticed. “One day they were a couple of likely lads, the next they were everywhere,” said Henry Pryor, a luxury property buying agent. “They understood the marketing and selling of property. They sold people a dream.

“They very successfully and quite determinedly delivered what people wanted. They’ve created a brand within property, which no one had done until they came along. Consumers say: ‘I don’t want any luxury flat, I want a Candy flat.’”

But he cautioned that some people question the pricing of some Candy properties, which hit a record £136m in 2011 for a One Hyde Park flat sold to Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov. “Price is what you pay, value is what you get,” Pryor said.

Nick bridles at suggestions that as there are rarely that many lights on in One Hyde Park flats at night, it might mean not many of the foreign buyers actually live there. “You might leave your light on when you go for a meal in a restaurant,” he told the audience at Mipim in the Olympia conference centre. “I don’t leave my lights on because I’ve got the Mandarin Oriental staff downstairs looking after the building.”

Friends and associates say the pair, although very close and known to finish each other’s sentences, have very different temperaments. Christian is described as “the brainier one, the numbers man”, while Nick is “the showman”.

Someone who has worked closely with them in the past said: “They’re really interesting characters. Chris is a strange mixture of bombast and insecurity, while Nick is the face that people see of the Candys.”

Nick, he said, “drops names like they’re going out fashion”. “It is always about who he has had in his house for the Monaco Grand Prix. You get this feeling that he wants to be liked. He likes to stay in the best hotels. He likes flashy boats. He can actually be quite good company, but he has a bit of a temper when things don’t go his way.”

Once a serial dater, Nick settled down when he met former Neighbours actor Holly Valance in 2009. He proposed to her in the Maldives with ‘Will you marry me’ spelled out in flaming torches on the beach and they married in a lavish outdoor ceremony in Beverly Hills in 2012. According to Hello! magazine, the wedding – attended by Simon Cowell and a sprinkling of minor royals – cost £3m, with a reported £1.2m given to Katy Perry as the wedding singer.

Valance describes him as “like a naughty schoolboy to my naughty schoolgirl”. She told the Daily Mail: “He is a genius with his work but in other areas I do sometimes have to protect him … He will say: ‘You protect me, don’t you?’ and I say: ‘Yeah, I would kill for you.’”

Giles Barrie, managing director at FTI Consulting and former editor of Property Week, said the brothers’ moment of real genius came when they bought Bowater House, a shabby 1950s office block on the site of One Hyde Park for £150m in 2004 and convinced the Qatari royal family they should help them spend almost £1bn to develop it. “That’s what sent them into warp drive,” he said.

“They created something in property for the uber-rich that no one had thought of. They realised London was becoming a magnet for global wealth and they created a location for that super-wealth.

“ A lot of people knock them, but what they’ve achieved has been eye-watering and pretty breathtaking.”

The brothers’ public relations are handled not by a financial media relations firm, but by showbiz PR Neil Reading, whose other clients include John Cleese, Stephen Fry and Dawn French.

On Reading’s website, Nick Candy gushes: “NRPR [Neil Reading PR] has guided us in formulating an ambitious strategy to help boost our profile and meet our niche target audience.

“We value their expertise in media relations and huge breadth of journalistic experience in placing stories on our behalf and their skill in crisis management. They have gone above and beyond our brief in developing our media relations.”

The brothers also take an active role in managing their own media relations. They have rolled out the names of their claimed celebrity mates – Cowell, Kylie Minogue, Ryan Seacrest, Bernie Ecclestone, Prince Albert of Monaco and the Topshop magnate Sir Philip Green – to garner column inches. But journalists who have been covering the pair’s businesses for a long time warn that they sometimes also claim to be “friends with the editor”. Reporters also warn that the brothers have a team of lawyers on speed dial and will fire off threatening emails.

The brothers were “unable” to answer any of the questions the Guardian asked in advance of the publication of this article. “Candy & Candy have asked me to put you on notice that they will instruct lawyers over anything written that is defamatory or incorrect,” Reading said.

They are not unused to the courtroom. In one long-running battle against a rich banker, who sued them over the fit and layout of his £12m One Hyde Park apartment, it was revealed they hired a private detective to pose as a middleman for the Saudi royal family to dig for dirt on their own customer. The case was settled with the disgruntled buyer collecting a multimillion payout.

Their most high-profile court battle was against their former partners and backers, the Qatari royal family. They took legal action after the Qataris scrapped the Candys’ plans for a £3bn development of Chelsea Barracks after pressure from the Prince of Wales.

It was revealed in court that during a face-to-face exchange over tea at Clarence House in 2009, Prince Charles had “pissed in [the Qatari emir’s] ear about how awful the [Lord Rogers-designed] scheme was”. An email from Candy shortly after the meeting said the emir “went mental” and told the boss of the Qatari Diar real estate firm to withdraw the designs as soon as possible.

The Candys claimed the Qatari’s change of heart over the design, due to “diplomatic and political reasons”, had cost them £81m. The judge ruled that Qatari Diar had breached the terms of the contract, but did not immediately award damages to Christian Candy’s CPC Group.

The case was eventually settled out of court with both sides able to claim some sort of victory – CPC group “apologised unreservedly” to the Qatari royal family and Prince Charles, but walked away with an undisclosed sum.

Potted profile

Born Nick Candy – 23 January 1973; Christian Candy – 31 July 1974, in Banstead, Surrey.

Education Both educated privately in Epsom. Nick studied human geography at Reading University and Christian read business at King’s College London.

Career Nick failed accounting exams at KPMG, before moving into advertising at J Walter Thompson and Dentsu Group, where he became the youngest director. With Christian he co-founded interior design firm Candy & Candy in 1995, of which he is chief executive. Christian had worked in commodity trading and corporate finance.

High point Selling a One Hyde Park flat for £136m to Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, in 2011.

Low point High court bust-up with the Qatari royal family over the proposed £3bn development of Chelsea Barracks.

• Real estate
• Luxury goods sector
• Housing market
• King Charles III
• Conservatives

More on this story

Luxury £5.25m apartment in One Hyde Park repossessed

Revealed: One Hyde Park's super-rich. But will they pay their tax?

One Hyde Park – review

Millionaire property developers the Candy brothers decide to move somewhere cheaper

One Hyde Park: how the Candy men created a billionaire's ideal home

Most viewed.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

• What Is Cinema?
• Newsletters

Too Big to Sail?

By Mark Seal

Espen Oeino, the Norwegian designer of such iconic yachts as Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s $200 million Octopus, was on a sleek 240-foot craft he had also designed, sailing from St. Tropez to Nice, in the fall of 2008. With him were three European billionaires and their wives, relaxed and happy at the end of yet another summer in a world that seemingly had no limits on luxury or cost. Suddenly the television was blaring with the news that the U.S. credit crisis had put the global economy at serious risk. “Soon they were all stuck to the TV, watching news unfold about how bad things were,” says Oeino, adding, “There were some very nervous people on board.” When they reached Nice, the billionaires rushed off the boat and onto their jets in order to fly home and tend to their businesses. “That is when I realized, Hey, something is really ugly here,” says Oeino.

[#image: /photos/54cbf5782cba652122d8a54e]|||Slide Show: Mark Seal and Todd Eberle delve into the lifestyles and personalities aboard the ocean’s most enviable vessels. |||

He shows me renderings in his Monte Carlo office of one of “the victims,” as he calls the super-yachts that were commissioned but never got built. He knew what had happened to the yachting world the last time the economy tanked, in 1929: the boats got small. “It took 50 years for yachts to return to comparable sizes,” he says, noting that the stalemate didn’t break until 1980, when the international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi launched the 282-foot, silver-hulled Nabila, named for his daughter. “It took a long time to come back to what it was pre-Depression. I was worried it was going to happen again.”

Equally alarmed was veteran yacht broker Nicholas Edmiston, whose clientele includes a number of American, European, and Russian billionaires. When I met Edmiston, in the summer of 2004, while I was writing another yacht article for this magazine, he regaled me with stories of wild extravagance and got me on several of the biggest, most sumptuous boats sailing the Mediterranean. “That was the height of the boom,” he tells me now in his red-leather office in Monte Carlo. Back then, yachts were routinely selling for premium prices, frequently double the asking price. “The yacht business more or less hit reinforced concrete in late fall of 2008,” says Edmiston. Gone were the days when a super-yacht that had cost the owner $35 million was sold “to somebody from a former Soviet Union country” for $75 million.

“Then what happened?,” I ask.

“Nothing. That was the trouble. Things got bad, really bad. People did not want to sell boats at deep discounts; people did not want to buy boats.” He had little choice but to wait for the storm to pass. “People were saying, ‘What are we going to do?’ ” he recalls. There was only one answer for brokers: reduce prices. “They would say, ‘I just want to get it sold.’ I said, ‘You’ve got to be realistic. We can sell it, but we can only sell it for what it’s worth. Don’t say to me you want 20, when I’ve just told you it’s worth 12.’ ” Edmiston says he recently sold a yacht for $65 million, $39 million less than the owner had turned down in the summer of 2008.

As the economic world crumbled around them, many yacht owners retreated, quietly mooring their boats in places where they wouldn’t be seen. “They were parking in Greece, Croatia, and La Ciotat [the shipyard town in Provence], and not taking them to St. Barth’s for Christmas,” says Oeino. Edmiston adds, “There was an attitude against people being extravagant and spending money!”

Many new launches were said to be the result of owners who had commissioned yachts before the crisis and were in too deep to stop. A number of innovative concepts were put on hold, however, most notably a collaboration between Wally, the state-of-the-art designer of powerboats and sailboats, and Pierre-Alexis Dumas, of the French luxury brand Hermès, for a vast, triangular, ecologically sustainable, $130 million “floating island” called WHY (Wally-Hermès Yachts). Before the crisis, Hermès had planned to finance the project on spec. “Now we have to wait for a client before proceeding,” says Wally owner Luca Bassani Antivari as we speed away from the Monaco coastline on his newest powerboat, the 73 Wallypower.

Fractional-ownership pitchmen promptly entered the arena of super-yachting. I met one of them in Cannes, on a boat designed by the British architect Lord Norman Foster. For $2.3 million, not including running costs, he told me, I could become a one-eighth owner of a futuristic craft called Ocean Emerald and sail on it for 30 days a year. “Yachting is a wonderful pastime, but it’s financial suicide,” says John Hare, chairman of YachtPlus. I boarded another “affordable” alternative in Cannes: the Aquariva, one of a limited edition of 22 speedboats created by the designer Marc Newson as an homage to the great Riva brand and available this fall through the international art dealer Larry Gagosian for a mere $1.5 million each.

I had become curious about the current market for big boats after spending an afternoon on one called Predator this past summer. At 238 feet, Predator is a marvel of engineering and naval architecture that seems to fly in the face of the recession. To underscore its name, it is decorated with sculptures and depictions of sharks and other predatory creatures. The owner had ripped out most of the standard staterooms to enlarge the master suite, which is now one of the largest in the world. The boat features a massive dive room, equipped with the latest scuba gear, so the owner and his guests can literally swim with the sharks.

The aggressive look is equally prevalent on the most audacious yacht afloat: the 390-foot A, created by the French architect and designer Philippe Starck for a Russian client he calls “a genius of mathematics.” Starck tells me A is a monolith, an artifact from the future, a line in the sand that makes every boat that came before it obsolete. His intention was to design a yacht that was “organic, in harmony with the sea,” as opposed to most super-yachts, which he feels treat the ocean with arrogance. “The fabulous gold shit,” he calls them. “Just showing the money, the power of the money, the vulgarity of the money.”

He was in bed, he says, where he gets most of his inspirations, when the vision for A came to him whole. He had the boat down on paper in an hour and a half, and A was launched in the summer of 2008. Is it a futuristic battleship? An ultra-modern submarine? It looks like an enormous white stiletto with what The Times of London called “a razor-sharp bow [that] will cut through Arctic ice.” Its white, porthole-dotted hull rises up sleek and shiny, its sharp angles impervious to piracy and price (it cost more than $300 million to build and requires $20 million a year to maintain). According to The Wall Street Journal, there are 23,600 square feet of living space, encased in bombproof glass, with floor-to-ceiling mirrors and hidden doors that lead to sanctums such as the one referred to as “the Nookie Room.” The 2,583-square-foot master suite, with its rotating bed, is accessible to a select few via a fingerprint security system. There are three pools (one whose glass bottom is visible from the disco below it), 44 security cameras, and a 35-member crew in custom-designed harem-style uniforms. With its high-speed twin 24,000-horsepower diesel engines, A is able to out-run almost anything on the high seas.

By Eve Batey

By Kase Wickman

The Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, the undisputed king of the super-yacht set, has four enormous boats. His newest, launched last summer, is Eclipse, the biggest yacht in the world. Though Abramovich’s representatives will not reveal details, Eclipse is believed to be between 533 and 600 feet, making it at least 18 inches longer than the previous recordholder, Dubai, owned by the Sheikh of Dubai. While Abramovich reportedly lost half of his estimated $23.5 billion fortune in the 2009 collapse of the Russian steel industry, Eclipse is a stunning statement of power. Built at a cost of somewhere between $400 and $800 million, it has eight decks (two for helicopters), a 70-member crew, 11 guest cabins, a disco, a mini-submarine, and reportedly special shields that emit flashes that prevent paparazzi from getting pictures. The boat is so overwhelming that even other oligarchs marvel. “A million euros [$1.3 million] a month in maintenance,” one says in praise of it.

“If you come with your own little palace, you are more welcome,” explains German industrialist and shipyard owner Guido Krass, who hosts royalty and heads of state aboard his 240-foot floating mansion, Silver Zwei (he sold the first Silver to the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi), on which he has traveled this year to Kuwait, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Oman, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Maldives.

This new, flamboyant level of oceangoing opulence is not restricted to a couple of billionaires, I am told by a bon vivant in one of the world’s most expensive luxury-goods emporiums. A banty rooster of Eastern European descent, he is wearing a blue linen suit from which protrudes a little potbelly, which he blames on weeks of lavish living at sea. He shows me on the screen of his iPhone pictures of the colossal Alfa Nero, which a multi-billionaire buddy of his had chartered at the standard rate of $1.1 million per week, not counting such running costs as the $650,000 it takes to fill up the gas tank. “I gained so much weight,” he says. “It was sick! ” He keeps his iPhone in my face to display scenes of life on Alfa Nero —the elegant staterooms, the large crew, the extravagant wine and food available at any time. “It was sick! ” he repeats. He points out the swimming pool on the boat’s stern, which can be transformed into a helicopter landing pad with the flip of a switch. Then he shows the lavish French villa his host had acquired at an astronomical price just so that he could entertain his guests between cruises.

Clearly, one league of super-yacht owners were gone. But another had swiftly taken their place, snapping up their boats (and their lifestyles) at deep discounts. The economic crisis had hit the big-boat world extremely hard, but from the tumult there had emerged a fresh species of vessel: bigger, more cutting-edge—the new new. For the new owners, it seemed that the recession had never happened. Hoping to meet a few of the proud possessors of the most expensive toys on earth, I went to Monaco and managed to go on board eight boats in eight days.

On the Good Ship Lollipop

I start in Monte Carlo, at La Belle Epoque, the 17,500-square-foot, 30-room, two-level phantasmagoria that was formerly the home of the late international banker Edmond Safra. On the morning of December 3, 1999, this extraordinary penthouse was destroyed by a fire started by his male nurse. Safra died of asphyxiation in a locked bathroom.

The Candy brothers, Nick, 37, and Christian, 36, the swinging, London-based developers and interior designers, snapped up the expansive residence and transformed it into a fancy showplace for their Candy & Candy company designs. (Two months after my visit, they would sell the penthouse to an unnamed Middle Eastern investor for $304 million.)

I find Nick Candy and his gorgeous Australian girlfriend, Holly, in the office in the penthouse, where—as in all of the Candys’ residences and their London headquarters—the brothers work side by side at matching desks.

“So you were impressed by the apartment?” asks Nick, the more outspoken brother, who has wavy reddish hair and is clad in cargo shorts and a pink linen shirt.

“I am frankly speechless,” I reply. “Did you get a good deal?”

“An amazing deal,” he says. “I think most people were scared to touch this.”

Were he and his brother spooked by the deadly fire that had raged through the place?

“No,” says Nick. “We had it blessed by every religion you can have it blessed by: Roman Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, rabbi—the whole lot.”

He leads me outside to the port, where in one prime slip Candyscape II, the brothers’ 203-foot extravaganza in white, stands waiting with its 14-member crew and every conceivable amenity.

In the main saloon, beneath a metal installation of the planets, Nick Candy attempts to describe the whale of a boat, employing a phrase that comes up frequently in conversations with the brothers: “not only.” According to a writer in Candy, the brothers’ magazine, the boat is “not only a home, but a floating showcase.” There’s not only an elevator but a circular shaft designed to take guests on a “Jules Verne—ish thrill ride” through the ship’s four levels. Not only is there a 12-person Jacuzzi, but it turns into a circular bed that rotates with the sun. Should the sun’s rays become too intense, the bed automatically sprays guests with a fine mist. In the guest cabins, not only are there full-length mirrors to satisfy the greatest narcissist, but the mirrors are equipped with invisible, computerized cameras that guests can program to see what they wore the night before—and the night before that—in order to avoid embarrassing wardrobe repeats. On the sundeck, according to Candy magazine, not only is there a massive alfresco dining table that can become a daybed, “but if, say, Lily Allen or Lady Gaga suddenly feels like performing … the table can also rise up to provide a small stage, complete with the necessary sound system.”

Most of all, Candyscape II is not only a yacht but a marketing tool, a model, like the Monte Carlo residence, to show off the Candy brothers’ expertise in designing homes, apartments, yachts, jets, helicopters, and cars. “We are in 30 countries today, designing for clients,” says Nick. “So whether it be a Kylie Minogue or Gwyneth Paltrow or any one of our billionaire clients, we are designing for their specific tastes.” To show potential new clients the unlimited scope of their designs, the Candys have to create their own domains. They have to live as well as, or better than, their clients. Hence, the multiple residences, the yacht, the private jet, the soon-to-be-completed helicopter, and the fleet of Rolls-Royces and Range Rovers. The brothers have an estimated worth of $1.5 billion.

Nick pauses, as if by telepathy. “Christian’s arrived,” he says, and his brother, tall, thin, angular, and intense, strides into the saloon, dressed exactly like Nick. The brothers are so close they complete each other’s sentences. Sons of Tony Candy, a small-ad-agency executive from Surrey, they began with a $9,000 loan from their grandmother to ride the London housing boom, developing and designing homes for the Über -rich. Then came the crash, seemingly shaking Candyland to its core. Banks went bust. Projects imploded. Their expansion into America—an eight-acre project in Beverly Hills—was imperiled when their partner, an Icelandic-owned bank, couldn’t pay its share of a loan and the venture went into default. However, they cannot afford to show weakness or retreat. In the Candy universe, to retreat is to die. Candyscape II is a strong signal that they not only have survived the economic crisis but are going full steam ahead.

“We weren’t really planning to buy a boat,” says Christian of their first yacht, the original Candyscape, which they acquired for their company in September 2003. “We came to a yacht show together and fell in love with it.” It was a 150-foot Benetti, on which they did a massive refit, including adding a mini-casino and a bathroom lined with antique Louis Vuitton suitcase leather. They felt they had to come up with the perfect name, and Nick rattles off a few they rejected: “ Candy & Candy, Eye Candy, Nose Candy, Yes We Candy .… Then Alasdhair Willis, who is Stella McCartney’s husband and one of our consultants, along with some of our marketing team, came up with Candyscape .”

The boat was a blast, the brothers say, recalling the parties they threw on it—with performances by Bon Jovi during the Cannes Film Festival and the Monaco Grand Prix, and guests that included Prince Albert, Uma Thurman, and Ryan Seacrest. It proved to be a magnet for business. “Big deals were signed on board,” says Nick. “We bought NoHo Square [their multi-billion-dollar London apartment and commercial complex] on the back of that boat during the Monaco Grand Prix. We did that with Kaupthing Bank, which, you know, is now in administration [has been taken over by the government].” In short, the yacht worked its magic. But one yacht is never enough. “We wanted bigger and better,” says Nick.

They were in the middle of construction of their new boat, a collaboration between Espen Oeino and the Candy & Candy design team, when the crisis hit. Candyscape II stood half built in an Italian shipyard. “In the construction industry, if you have something half built, it is worth nothing,” says Nick. They decided to forge ahead.

Christian picks up the thread. “Every six weeks I was heading down there to keep an eye on it, to look at the detail. With a project of this size, you have to be on top of it.”

Once the boat was launched, the economic crisis took an even more painful turn. “Everybody thought you could put a deposit on a boat and flip it and six weeks later make money,” says Nick. “But the value of yachts has fallen off a cliff.”

He looks around, taking in Candyscape II. “In the boom, you would probably get 80-million-plus euros [$104 million] for this,” says Nick. “Today, you would probably get—”

“—sixty,” says Christian.

Their latest deal could easily make up the shortfall. One Hyde Park, 86 luxury apartments adjacent to Harrods in London’s Knightsbridge, which the Candys opened this fall in partnership with the prime minister of Qatar, is said to be the most expensive real-estate development in the history of Great Britain. The brothers told Bloomberg News that they expect to earn £550 million [$860 million] if the remaining apartments at One Hyde Park sell for their asking price. They charter Candyscape II throughout the year, for $585,000 a week. Still, Nick says, “you don’t break even or make money on boats.” The boat sucks up cash insatiably. “To operate a yacht like this is 2.5 million euros [$3.2 million] a year,” Nick continues. “That is just straight operating costs for the crew and maintaining it, and we are not even in the super-league of the 90-to-100-meter [295-to-330-foot] yachts.”

“It is very different to go on a yacht and then go back to hotel life,” says Christian. “The service standards, the space for freedom, waking up on different mornings with different backdrops—you just cannot get that in a hotel.”

Plus, Candyscape II is a showcase not only for the Candy & Candy brand but also for the Candy brothers themselves, offering instant access to fellow super-yacht owners, who tend to stick to their own kind. “Like-minded people go in for boats,” explains Nick. “We’ll be in St. Tropez, and we will go on [billionaire British retailer] Philip Green’s boat, [British Thoroughbred-racing king] Michael Tabor’s boat. Most of our friends have boats, so you just go from boat to boat. Obviously business comes up.

“This time of year, everybody is coming here,” he continues when we are on the stern of Candyscape II, surveying the giant boats crowding Monte Carlo’s harbor. “From Middle Eastern royal families to Russian oligarchs, entrepreneurs from all around the world.” They are here because the South of France is a jumping-off point to the sun spots of the world. “We’re one and a half hours from London, and you have Ibiza, Capri, Sardinia, Corsica, Monaco, Cannes, St. Tropez. All my friends from L.A. are here now. Sam Nazarian is on a boat. He owns all the top restaurants, bars, and clubs in Los Angeles. It is his 35th birthday on Friday night. Harvey Weinstein is here. The prime minister and the Emir of Qatar are both here. All the royal families of the Middle East are here. For these two months, this has become the center of the world, where the super-rich want to play.”

Nick races off the yacht, and he and his girlfriend climb into Catch Me if You Candy, the brothers’ speedboat. The next night they’re going to a party at the home of David and Simon Reuben, the Bombay-born, London-based brothers who made their billions in aluminum mining in Russia. “They own a number of boats, including Siren, a very nice boat that I think my friend Simon Cowell’s going to be chartering in the next couple of weeks,” says Nick. “They’re having a big party. I’ll see whether I can get you an invite.”

He does. That night, in the Reuben villa, high on a hill above St. Tropez, yacht owners (including Denise Rich, the former wife of the American tax exile Marc Rich, who is staying on her boat, Lady Joy ) mix with British man-about-town Nicky Haslam, actors George Hamilton and Joan Collins, and more than 100 others. No one seems to be dwelling on the recession.

On the Bounding Main

I’m at the port of La Spezia, Italy, where a caravan of vehicles, led by a silver Maybach, speeds onto the dock. Behind the Maybach is a black Mercedes cargo truck, out of which four men in matching navy-blue Armani shirts and slacks rush and begin unloading luggage: black Armani suitcases, silver Armani shopping bags, white Armani duffel bags.

From the Maybach steps Giorgio Armani himself, having been driven two hours straight from his July ready-to-wear show in Milan. Dressed also in navy, he hurries onto the gangplank of his new, 213-foot yacht, Main, with an exterior as deep green as the sea. He greets his crew, 14 young men in white Armani shirts and shorts, then disappears into his bedroom, emerging moments later in identical white shorts and shirt.

“ Andiamo, andiamo! ” he says to hurry an assistant and associates waiting for him with a few last bits of business to attend to before he can sail away, with a group of longtime friends, on a two-month vacation. He signs papers and poses for a photograph. Then he strips to his waist and walks around the boat, through its stunning split-level, colorful main saloon (a departure from the regulation Armani Casa hues of black and mauve) and its sleek areas with wraparound louvered windows. Armani quickly settles into a world that moves on his whim. Up on the bridge deck, his captain awaits his orders. “Maybe Mr. Armani changes the plan,” he says. They might sail for Naples, Monaco, Cannes, St. Tropez, Ibiza, or the Aeolian Islands of Sicily. It’s all up to Armani.

Then the engines roar and the air fills with smoke. The crew members have changed into their sailing uniforms: shirts and shorts the color of the boat. One of them shouts out something in Italian, the dock lines are thrown off, and the big boat backs away from the dock. “ Bella, bella!, ” Armani exclaims, sitting at a teak table on the fourth and topmost deck with his friends, laughing, dipping cookies into cappuccino, the stress falling rapidly away as Main sets sail.

Meanwhile, I am about to go super-yachting in Greece, whose colossal financial crisis could bring down the whole of Europe if it defaults on its $400 billion in loans. After a night in Athens, I fly to Corfu, which some German lawmakers have suggested be sold to help satisfy the national debt. Here, in the blue Ionian Sea, lies the ideal vessel for escaping any economic crisis, a yacht whose exterior is painted in a camouflage pattern, like the World War I battleships designed to confuse and elude enemy gunships. A 115-foot riot of design in blinding Popsicle colors, the yacht is called Guilty.

“YOU HAVE PEOPLE FROM INDIA AND CHINA NOW TALKING ABOUT YACHTS. RUSSIA IS COMING BACK, AND THE MIDDLE EAST IS BOOMING.”

Guilty as Charged

Dakis Joannou, the Cyprus-born construction magnate who is among the world’s leading collectors of contemporary art, takes me on a tour of his estate. Then we sit outside at a table in the garden, looking out at Guilty, which blazes with almost neon intensity in the morning sun. Soon the Milan-based designer Ivana Porfiri is at the table with her iPad, helping Joannou tell how they created what he has called “a totally magical object.”

Once again, Guilty is the last in a yacht-lover’s progression to ever bigger and better boats. “The first was a very fast 55-miles-per-hour Italian boat called Mickey Mouse, ” says Joannou. “The next one was called Donald Duck. We had a family conference for the name of the new boat. Everybody wanted to call it Goofy .” Instead, he took the name of a work by the artist Jenny Holzer: Protect Me from What I Want. His fourth boat, a 90-footer, served Joannou’s purposes: sailing around Greece’s archipelago islands every weekend from March until October. But then Joannou needed “an upgrade,” and he enlisted Porfiri to help him create a new boat.

What Porfiri conjured up—a swirling Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole whose interiors explode with infinity mirrors, ultra-modern furniture, and windows that change shade as the sun moves—would surely have been inventive enough. In the summer of 2007, however, the Michelangelo in Joannou’s collection of contemporary artists arrived on Corfu for a visit.

“Jeff,” he says, meaning Jeff Koons.

A balding, 70-year-old grandfather, Joannou is subdued to the point of being shy. He might have remained simply the rich chairman of a group of privately held building and civil-engineering companies, but in 1985 his life took an unexpected turn: he met Jeff Koons at an exhibition of his “Equilibrium” series and fell so deeply in love with the artist’s work that he became a serious collector and a major patron of Koons, who is now the top-selling living artist at auction.

“He was sitting on this actual table, and I told him the plans for the boat,” says Joannou. “I said, ‘Do you have any ideas about the outside? Because we don’t know about the color.’ ”

“Razzle-dazzle,” Koons said almost immediately.

“What?” asked Joannou. “Razzle-dazzle” was the term used for camouflaging World War I battleships. Once Koons showed Joannou photographs of those battleships with geometrically patterned exteriors, Porfiri opened her notebook to show that she had had the identical idea, causing Joannou to exclaim, “It has to be done.”

Koons went to work, applying the design and adding an image of music star Iggy Pop on the top deck. Koons suggested calling the boat Iggy, but after Joannou saw and later acquired a Sarah Morris painting that featured one word in red on a white field—GUILTY—he knew he had found the perfect name.

What emerged was a boat so extreme that it had to be wrapped in paper to guard against paparazzi as it was trucked from the Cantieri Navali Rizzardi shipyard in Sabaudia, Italy. All along the way, trees and power lines had to be cut, and bridges strengthened, to accommodate the load. Joannou and his wife, Lietta, and Porfiri took the boat on its maiden voyage, and it caused a dizzy stir in the little port of Hydra.

“Wow! What is that?,” Joannou recalls people asking. “Is it a disco boat?”

In June 2008, Guilty was officially launched in Athens to the acclaim of a hundred art aficionados, including Larry Gagosian and the Italian photographer Jean Pigozzi, whose own Ettore Sottsass—designed trawler had pushed previous design limits. “And I thought my boat was crazy,” Pigozzi told Joannou.

Would the same boat be built today? Guilty was a product of the height of the boom, and even Porfiri admits things are different now. “Everything was climbing up and up and—” She slams her hand on the table. “Then everything came crashing down. Today, you don’t want to show anything.”

“A, people don’t have it,” says Joannou, meaning money. “People just stopped buying yachts. And, B, even people who go on yachts don’t really use them anymore, because of the cost of fuel.”

The owner of arguably the most ostentatious vessel on the sea, however, has no intention of giving it up. “I am what I am,” he says. “You can’t really change your life completely, and I don’t think people should.” He pauses, then adds, “Let’s stick to pleasant things.”

As we sail around Corfu, it occurs to me that Guilty might be an ingenious hedge against the recession, as a piece of contemporary art whose skin—the biggest and most expensive Jeff Koons work in existence—might be worth more in the art market than in today’s beleaguered yacht market. A Koons Balloon Flower sculpture sold in 2008 for $25.8 million at auction. Ivana Porfiri insists it’s a boat, not a floating piece of art. But when I bring the subject up with Joannou, the magnate emerges. “Hmm, maybe yes,” he admits.

Terific, with One R

The next day, a Eurocopter EC120 is sent to fly me to the tiny island of Patmos, where a beautiful shipping heiress is waiting on a boat that was inspired by Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra:

The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d

Burn’d on the water: the poop was beaten

Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that

The winds were love-sick with them.

The sails of Angela Ismailos’s stunning 164-foot Perini Navi sailing yacht, Baracuda, are indeed purple. Ismailos is waiting seductively on the stern, barefoot, in a flowing sundress and a gold necklace, as members of her crew of eight deliver me in her dinghy.

By noon, we are sipping champagne in her handsomely furnished saloon. My hostess lights a big cigar, turns up the volume of her favorite opera, Tosca, and, as Maria Callas’s voice fills the air, tells me about her boat. The daughter of a Greek shipping executive and the wife of shipping magnate George Economou (No. 707 on the 2008 Forbes list of international billionaires), Ismailos is a fireball. She has degrees in law and political science from Athens University, and she has studied at New York University, the New York Film Academy, the Juilliard School, the Lee Strasberg Studio, and Columbia University, in New York, where she lives part-time in a Park Avenue apartment surrounded by the works of her friends Julian Schnabel, John Currin, and Francesco Clemente. Her first film, Great Directors —in which she interviews 10 filmmakers, from Bernardo Bertolucci to John Sayles—was shown last year at the Venice Film Festival. When it opened in Cannes, she had a party for 150 friends on her boat.

Angela says that when she was young she would sit in her father’s office and look out at the port of Piraeus. “I used to sit there and look at all the fishing boats, cruise boats, sailing boats, and I always imagined torture, battles, and the Persians coming to attack the Parthenon and take over Athens,” she says. She also had a recurring dream: “A huge sailing boat with purple sails coming to save me and my family.”

When she began conceptualizing her dream boat, she and her husband came across Rupert Murdoch’s 184-foot sailboat, Rosehearty, with its Christian Liaigre interiors. While they admired it, Ismailos had something quite different in mind: “a continuity of the floors and ceiling,” she says, referring to the bleached teak that you see throughout the boat. She envisioned a minimalist, contemporary vessel, its walls of white parchment and lacquer, its hull covered with reflective silver. It would be one of the world’s most technically superior and aesthetically stylish sailboats, as smooth as the predator whose name she would give it: Baracuda , with one r, “because I don’t like two *r’*s,” she says. One night in New York, at a party hosted by Calvin Klein, she met the man who would help her achieve her vision, the master of minimalism who had designed Klein’s Madison Avenue flagship, the London-based architect John Pawson. She gets Pawson on the phone during my visit to extol the virtues of the boat, which, she says, definitely wasn’t built with the meager proceeds from her films. “It would take James Cameron or a Jurassic Park blockbuster returns to afford to buy a sailboat like this,” she says.

“When I met my husband, I told him, ‘I love art, I love opera,’ and he told me, ‘I love shipping,’ ” she says. “I told him, ‘I hope we don’t end up like Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis.’ His ambition and her talent killed their lives. But since then everything has been good. He gives me a lot of freedom.”

A late lunch is served on the expansive sundeck, with its Hermès deck chairs, where Ismailos talks about her next film, a feature entitled The City of a Dead Woman, the story of a woman who re-discovers her desire to live through a complex relationship with a priest on a remote Greek island; about the time she visited the tortured Christina Onassis on Skorpios; about a party she is giving the following night on Baracuda, with guests including Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s chairman of worldwide contemporary art, VANITY FAIR contributing editor Reinaldo Herrera and his wife, the designer Carolina Herrera, and several Greek royals. She asks me to stay.

She and her boat have a hypnotic hold on me, but I have to excuse myself and fly to the South of France, where an unlikely sailor is expecting me on a dock in St. Tropez.

The Aristocraft

Tara Gabriel Galaxy Gramophone Getty is the name his parents gave him, but everyone now knows him simply as Tara Getty. We are on a 1971 Riva Aquarama, and he is taking me to his boat, a storied vessel launched in 1938. The last private yacht of Sir Malcolm Campbell, the British racing hero known as “the fastest man on earth” for breaking speed records in cars and boats he named Blue Bird, it has been immaculately restored with its original fittings as well as the newest technology. “I like classic boats personally,” Getty says when we are in *Blue Bird’*s main saloon, which is as elegant as a suite at Claridge’s. “I always liked older things. I quite like restoring things versus building from scratch.”

His circuitous route to Blue Bird is indicated by a photograph placed prominently on a table in the saloon: a 1969 Patrick Lichfield portrait of Getty’s parents on the roof of the 19th-century palazzo they purchased during their honeymoon in Marrakech. The picture shows John Paul Getty II, son of the American oil baron who was once the world’s richest man, in a djellaba, and Talitha Pol, the Javanese beauty who became a 1960s fashion icon, kneeling in harem pants and a flowing robe. They were introduced by Getty Sr.’s onetime assistant Claus von Bülow, who seated them next to each other at a dinner party he was hosting in London after Rudolf Nureyev, who was said to be entranced by Talitha, had canceled. Married a year later in Rome, the couple blazed a trail of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll to become emblems of the 1960s along with their friends Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. “It’s a beautiful picture, and it sort of represents the wild 60s,” says Getty. Yves Saint Laurent, who paid homage to Talitha in some of his designs, once described the couple as “beautiful and damned.”

ONCE JEFF KOONS SHOWED HIM PHOTOS OF THOSE WORLD WAR I BATTLESHIPS, JOANNOU SAID, “IT HAS TO BE DONE.”

Tara, their only child, was born in Rome in May of 1968. When he was three, his mother died of a heroin overdose. Tara was sent to live with his father’s first wife and four half-siblings in Rome. When he was five, his half-brother John Paul Getty III was kidnapped by the Mafia, and his right ear was delivered to an Italian newspaper with a ransom note. “Everyone left Italy, and the rest of my family went to America,” Tara tells me. “I went to live with my maternal grandparents, who were living down here.

“I consider myself very lucky that I came here,” he says of St. Tropez, where he and his family still live part of the year, in the house of his late maternal grandparents, the artists Willem and Poppet Pol. “They were great. They became my parents, really. I went to school for four years in Ramatuelle [a village in the hills above St. Tropez]. It’s an amazing place to be brought up.”

In St. Tropez, the world of boats opened up to him. His father had been born at sea, “off the coast of Italy on a cruise ship,” he says. In 1988, John Paul Getty II bought film producer Robert Stigwood’s antique yacht, Jezebel, and after a restoration re-christened her Talitha G, for his late wife. He and Tara had discussed crossing the Atlantic together in Talitha G, but he died in 2003.

The son John Paul and Talitha Getty left behind is an unpretentious, gentle man, tanned and bearded. He spends half his time in South Africa, where he and his wife, Jessica, run a game reserve in Zululand. But it is here, on the sea, that he feels most alive. His résumé is rife with private schools in England and time spent in the family businesses, but through it all runs a series of boats, gradually growing in size and range, that led him to Blue Bird. “He’s a serial boat buyer,” says his broker, Nick Edmiston, who helped Tara locate Blue Bird, which was in a sorry state in a Rotterdam shipyard.

As Getty proudly gives me a tour of the boat, he talks about its restoration and both the freedom of being on the sea and the danger. Once, when he was sailing with a friend in the Gulf Stream off the Florida coast, the waters were so rough that the ship actually broke up around them, and the Coast Guard had to rescue them. No chance of that happening on Blue Bird, which was stripped down to its studs and rebuilt piece by piece by G. L. Watson, of Liverpool. The interiors were done by the pre-eminent firm of Bannenberg and Rowell Design, run by Dickie Bannenberg and Simon Rowell, in London.

It is tempting to view Getty and Blue Bird as part of the new strain of super-yachts, beyond the reach of the global recession. But, for him, a yacht is not something to show; it’s a way of life, stretching back to the glory days of his parents. “So many come into yachting because they made a fortune; Tara came into it because he was a kid who grew up on the beach,” says Edmiston.

The other end of the spectrum plays out on the dock in Monte Carlo. I’m standing with my luggage in front of the Port Palace hotel, which overlooks the marina, at the end of my eight-day adventure. On the decks of a moored yacht there is a commotion, made by white-clad crew members as they line up in formation to bid a charter guest farewell. A short Eastern European, trailed by his family, emerges to the cooing of the crew. The scene attracts a gaggle of onlookers, who quickly approach the boat with their cameras. The man ambles down the gangplank in blue velvet house slippers and heads for a white Rolls-Royce Phantom standing nearby. He and his family climb inside, but the rowdy horde of young men and women surround the sedan, and one girl places her grimy hands on the hood and leans against the car to pose for a picture. “How rude!” screams a crew member as the Rolls speeds away. Then the crew scurries back to the boat to get it ready for the next guests, due to arrive within hours—the number of yacht charters rose sharply last summer, after recovering from a drop the year before.

Speaking of the future of yachts, Guido Krass, the German industrialist, tells me, “The Americans have been quiet, but the Asians are going for these 100-meter [328-foot] monsters. You have people from India and mainland China now talking about yachts. Russia is coming back, and the Middle East is booming. Despite the economic crisis, the average size of big boats has outgrown all expectations.” This fall’s new arrivals include Orca, New Jersey Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov’s futuristic 315-foot vision; Serene, a 439-foot Espen Oeino marvel, complete with a Snow Room (where guests can cool off in a simulated blizzard) and an outdoor cinema (two drive-in-style screens rise up from the deck); and Pacific, a 278-foot giant with, according to the designer Dickie Bannenberg, “elements of Nepal, Japan, Polynesia, South America, and the movie Minority Report thrown in.”

In spite of the global economic meltdown, the world of the super-yachts sails on.

Special Correspondent

Cocktail hour.

By signing up you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Laura Regensdorf

By Eliza Brooke

By Nate Freeman

• U.K. Showbiz
• Meghan Markle
• Jeremy Renner
• Taylor Swift
• Kim Kardashian

Pushing the boat out! Holly Valance's husband Nick Candy treats her to a £26 million luxury yacht... as he calls in Paul McKenna to cure her seasickness

By Dan Cain For Mailonline

Published: 10:53 EDT, 24 January 2016 | Updated: 11:59 EDT, 24 January 2016

View comments

She lives the life of luxury with her billionaire husband.

And Holly Valance, 32, has received a gift most people could only dream of, in the shape of a £26 million yacht named II.II.

But there was one small problem for the Australian beauty -- she suffered from seasickness.

Scroll down for video 

Splashing out: Holly Valance, 32, has received a gift from her husband Nick Candy, 43, most people could only dream of, in the shape of a £26 million yacht named II.II

However, property tycoon Nick Candy, 43, was able to resolve the issue by calling in top hypnotist Paul McKenna, who used his skills to help Holly overcome her issue.

RELATED ARTICLES

Share this article

The main consideration for Candy when buying the yacht was whether or not it would be suitable for the couple's two-year-old daughter Luka.

In an interview with Boat International , he said: 'There were no bars and it was designed for a Rolls-Royce Phantom to be kept in the tender garage! I didn’t need any of that.

'The sundeck was all wrong – everything was too small, the Jacuzzi, the seating. Inside it was like a Russian tsar’s palace. I’m not saying that’s bad but it’s not my family’s style. It was too heavy, too classical and it was quite dark. We needed to de-wood it, basically.'

Problem solved: Nick called in renowned hypnotist Paul McKenna to cure his wife's seasickness 

And the revamp has made the boat's interior almost unrecognisable from its initial design, with Holly playing a major part in its development.

The yacht has an art deco feel with its monochrome decor complementing the patinated wall-panelling and dark wood surfaces.

Artwork from revered names such as Tracy Emins and Dominic Harris has added a colourful and quirky element to the sophisticated vessel.

Hands on: The revamp has made the boat's interior almost unrecognisable from its initial design, with Holly playing a major part in its development

The yacht really does appear to be a love letter to his family with its very name 11th of the 11th referencing Luka's birthday.

Such was the emphasis on ensuring the boat was family friendly that Candy had it written into the contract that II.II needed to be childproof.

Candy has previously owned two super-yachts -- a 45 metre Benetti and a 62 metre vessel -- and insists those experiences aided him with the design of his latest purchase.

'I’ve made mistakes in the past,' he revealed. 'I’ve designed stuff which looks great, but then you sit on it. My wife told me: ‘I’m not sitting on another sofa that’s uncomfortable,’ ” he says. “Functionality and comfort are the most important things.' 

Holly and Nick met in 2009 after meeting at a mutual friend's dinner party, and wed in 2012.

She told the Daily Mail in 2013: 'I never believed it when people said that sometimes you meet someone and you know he’s the one,' she said.

She continued: 'But, just to be totally cheesy and clichéd, it was like that the first time we met.'

The happy couple welcomed their daughter, Luka Violet Toni Candy, in November 2013. 

Third time lucky: Candy has previously owned two super-yachts -- a 45 metre Benetti and a 62 metre vessel -- and insists those experiences aided him with the design of his latest purchase

• 11.11: the 63m Benetti with family at its heart | Boat International

Share or comment on this article: Holly Valance's husband Nick Candy treats her to a £26m luxury yacht

Most watched news videos.

• Joan Collins commends Princess Kate's brave cancer disclosure
• Massacre in Moscow: Weapons used by terrorists during killing spree
• How UK news programmes announced Kate's cancer diagnosis
• Zelensky tears into Putin for blaming Moscow attack on Ukraine
• Queen Elizabeth's Comms Sec hails Kate's unprecedented video
• Terrifying footage of Moscow concertgoers fleeing gunmen
• Shocking footage shows aftermath of concert hall shooting in Moscow
• Footage shows Queens mom saving daughter from hallway assailant
• Terrifying moment agitated elephant charges at crowd in India
• Moscow terror suspect screams as he is captured by Russian forces

Comments 235

Share what you think

• Worst rated

The comments below have not been moderated.

The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

We are no longer accepting comments on this article.

Femail Today

• Follow DailyMail
• Subscribe Daily Mail
• Follow @dailymail
• Follow MailOnline
• Follow Daily Mail

• Today's headlines

• MORE HEADLINES
• Moscow attack suspect screams in terror in new footage of his capture as he is chased through woods by Russian troops who tell him they'll 'cut him up', then slice off his ear and force him to eat it
• Putin scrambles to save face after ignoring US warning of ISIS attack as it emerges one terrorist was pictured scoping venue: Two of four suspects plead guilty in court after genital electrocution torture and one being forced to eat his own EAR
• Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce stayed at private $18k-a-night estate on exclusive Harbour Island in the Bahamas for some R&R after her Eras tour
• Horrifying moment boys aged 12 and seven approach woman in her garage before stabbing her repeatedly
• Girl, 8, drowns after being sucked into a 1ft-wide pipe while playing in pool at Houston hotel - as authorities take 13 hours to retrieve her body
• ISIS threatens to 'massacre' Putin and Russians and says Moscow attack terrorists' torture 'has increased our bloodlust' - as new footage shows one murderer caught hiding up a tree and Kremlin vows to 'kill everyone involved'
• Laurent de Brunhoff dead at 98: Babar author and heir who helped create global empire form the children's books dies at his Florida home after two weeks' hospice care his widow reveals
• Big changes are coming to the chicken at Chick-fil-A, here's what to expect next time you order your favorite sandwich
• PICTURED: Houston girl, eight, who died after being sucked into 1ft-long pipe in Hilton hotel swimming pool
• The conveyor belt of torture in Putin's prisons that awaits Moscow concert hall terrorists: Inmates are stripped, beaten and forced to rape one another by brutal guards, with their bodies returned to relatives with no internal organs
• Trump is mocked for claiming he won TWO trophies at his West Palm Beach golf club as he receives award from legend Jack Nicklaus in front of Melania - just hours before deadline to pay $454 million fraud fine
• Meghan Markle will sell MAKEUP and body lotions through new lifestyle brand American Riviera Orchard as she adds yoga mats, lavender sachets and dog shampoo to her ever-expanding business
• Trump's $454 million fraud fine will be put on hold IF he pays $175million in 10 days, court rules
• Volleyball coach, 22, accused of raping one of his 15-year-old players at the all-girls Catholic high school where he taught kills himself hours after he pleaded not guilty in court
• PICTURED: California man, 21, killed by mountain lion as his younger brother recovers from savage attack in the hospital
• Terrifying moment NYC teen is attacked by ex-boyfriend who waited for her in apartment stairwell then pounced , dragging her down the stairs, before her mom intervened
• Gunman who killed ex-college hockey stars Meghan Moore and Sidney Capolino in Miami double murder suicide is pictured for the first time as it's revealed he was a deadbeat dad with history of substance abuse and domestic violence
• MAUREEN CALLAHAN: The sad truth is that even Kate's cancer won't spark a Sussex reconciliation. After all the endless leaking, petty parasitic mudslinging and sick slurs, how COULD they be trusted?
• Is THIS the best way to put a duvet cover on? Internet goes wild for viral hack
• Cajun Navy takes over search for missing autistic teen Sebastian Rogers, 15, who vanished three weeks ago
• Outrageous moment Texas mother of 12-year-old child who stabbed and almost killed 59-year-old woman downplays his crime and claims 'he struggles from mental problems'
• Judge tears into Trump's lawyers for accusing New York prosecutors of misconduct without any evidence in fiery Stormy Daniels hearing
• Has Banksy finally let his mask slip? Fans claim man spotted at London mural bears 'striking resemblance' to ex-public schoolboy believed to be secretive street artist
• The rich kid teenage reality star 'superbrat' who captured Superman Henry Cavill's heart: Natalie Viscuso found fame on MTV's Super Sweet 16 before she was embroiled in a 'black face' scandal that almost threatened to derail her lover's Netflix career
• Atlanta property owner is left exasperated after THIRTY squatters take over his land - with one freeloader even suing him for $190,000 - as he begs for them to leave so he can build affordable housing
• Jodi Hildebrandt's' pantry full of food and luxury desert compound where she and Ruby Franke tortured and starved their kids
• Jeff Bezos' ex-wife MacKenzie Scott channels most of her $640 million to extreme left-wing 'gender-identity' groups and migrant-advocacy nonprofits, including one that said Ron DeSantis and his anti-immigration policies 'must be stopped'
• Two kids are left orphans after dad shoots dead their glamourous mom inside a walk-in closet before turning the gun on himself
• How tech entrepreneur and loyal 'Sussex Squad' member Christopher Bouzy vowed to fight online hate but once said Kate Middleton looked old enough to be Prince Harry's aunt and called William 'a balding Muppet'
• MOST READ IN DETAIL

• Back to top

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group